In the days before its big, splashy, Kardashian wedding-level annual developer conference, Google is letting one juicy tidbit escape from its locked-down treasure trove of announcements.

Brace yourselves, now.

It’s mobile recommendations. That is, publishers and developers can use Google+ to fuel a constant stream of recommended content for users of their mobile websites.

Recommendations from Google+ surface bring up content based on what you’re currently reading. It can also recommend more articles by the same author, articles your Google+ friends have shared, or pages that are particularly popular with the general Google+ audience.

Put it all together; whadda ya get?!

For now, this JavaScript snippet-powered feature is for mobile web only. Publishers and developers can specify content for the engine to not recommend.

This is just one of the Google+-themed platform announcements we’ll be hearing more about during I/O throughout this week. The biggest Google+ developer tool released to date has been Google+ sign-in, which is either a companion or competitor to Facebook’s Open Graph login, depending on to whom you’re speaking.

We asked Google+ PM director Seth Sternberg how Google+ sign-in was working out for developers so far — particularly developers using the mechanism to boost their Android app adoption rates.

“Anecdotally, we’ve heard really great things,” the Googler replied. “We wanted to drive more Android installs, and it’s been amazing in terms of user engagement. It’s really sending users back to our partners.”

At I/O, 50 Google partners already using Google+ sign-in will be present to talk about their experiences. The full list of partners presenting is included below:

Air New Zealand, AllTheCooks, Banjo, Branchout, Business Insider, Colopla, Community Factory, Contacts+, Dealflicks, Deezer, Editora Globo, eHow, Fandango, Flixster, Forbes, Funny or Die, Glamour, Go SMS Pro, HRS.com, Huffington Post, ibotta, Jolicloud , Kabam, KickSend, KLM, Magisto, Mashable, mon.ki, n24, NPR, Owners.com, Pixiv, Polygon, RCS, RebelMouse, Restalo.es, SB Nation, SkillPages, Slacker, Softonic, Songza, SoundCloud, Speakingtree, Synacor, Tamindir, Terra, The Fancy, The Guardian, The Verge, TravelZoo, Trovit, TuneIn, Vasily, Verbling, and Voxy

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Google has just given Blogger a Plus-size upgrade. Now, you’ll be able to see Google+ comments for a Blogger post alongside Blogger comments for the same post.

It might sound confusing, but it’s a pretty natural integration.

“For example, if there’s a public Google+ discussion about one of your blog entries, those comments and replies will also appear on your Blogger blog,” writes Google engineer Yonatan Zunger today on the companyblog. “This way you can engage with more of your readers, all in one place.”

Here’s a quick look at how it all comes together:

Google+ comments on Blogger posts can be public or privately shared. Readers can choose to view top comments, all comments, or comments only from people in their own Circles.

If you use Blogger and want to start using Google+ comments, you can do so from your blog’s dashboard. Click the Google+ tab on the dashboard; from there, just check “Use Google+ Comments.”

If you ever wanted proof that Google+ is, in fact, not a social network but rather an all-in bid for your identity, here’s your pudding: mere weeks after the announcement of the Google+ login button, hundreds of major media outlets are using the Google+ button for their web and mobile user logins.

Today, Google is announcing that American Idol, Universal Music Group, Fox Broadcasting company, and hundreds of other partners are doing Google+-flavored sign-ins. The service had around 10 partners at its launch; now, through middleman-like service providers including Gigya and Janrain, it’s expanding its reach by an order of magnitude and then some.

And while those red login buttons will often sit next to other login options, they bring a few unique benefits — especially for partners with Android apps.

“They can put Google+ signup next to Twitter or Facebook or their own authentication,” said Google exec Seth Sternberg in a recent chat about the rollout. “There are lots of great advantages for the developer and the user, but it’s not a one-or-the-other choice. … You could connect with both, or make it single sign-on.”

The Android piece is particularly interesting. If you’re a publisher or developer with an Android app to promote, a Google+-authenticated user who is browsing around your desktop website will be prompted to download the Android app, too. Then, the user can opt to get an over-the-air install of the app without ever touching a smartphone.

As Sternberg said, “A lot of times, [people] are using a web application that they love, and they don’t even realize it has an Android app. It’s just not obvious. So we’ve made it easy to get an app onto your phone with one tap.”

The little red button, he concluded, takes around two weeks of dev time to get up and running — a timeframe that’s consistent with the time between the Google+ login launch and today’s news of massive expansion.

Here’s a demo of the login button in action:

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Google doesn’t think taking a screenshot is easy enough, so it updated its social network Google+ today to include “Capture,” an app that is supposed to make it easier to take pictures of your Hangouts.

Hangouts are Google+’s video chat rooms. Up to nine people can join a Hangout and use it either to chat on a particular subject (or just visit with friends). The video technology isn’t all that bad if you’ve got a good Internet connection, and politicians, religious icons, and celebrities have used the service to connect with their fans.

Since Hangouts arrived on the scene, screenshots have been the only option for capturing funny and memorable moments. The Capture app takes a picture in one click. The photos are saved into a photo album on your Google+ profile that only people in the Hangout can see. Because Google has introduced a number of apps for Hangouts, including Screen-sharing, YouTube, and Effects, which let you put on funny virtual hats, glasses, and facial hair that follow your face around the screen, people are bound to want to use the app.

In order to make sure that everyone plays fairly and that no one feels like their photo is being taken without them knowing, Google has included notifications that the app is in use. If the app is installed in the Hangout session you just joined, you’ll receive an alert. When someone opens the app, you’re receive and alert. And, of course, when someone actually takes a picture, you’ll receive an alert.

Google+ image via Jeremy Ng, Google

This morning, Google announced it’s giving web and mobile app developers access to Google+ login buttons — and a panoply of special features along with them — to use for app signups and identity authentication.

The question is, will developers in a saturated world of Twitter and Facebook login buttons be willing to hop onboard with yet another system?

Googlers David Glazer and Seth Sternberg spoke with us at length yesterday; both work on Google+’s developer-focused products. They told us the Google+ buttons put the focus on simplicity, eliminate social spam, and try to give users a seamless experience between desktop and mobile. So far, the buttons can be used by web, Android, and iOS developers.

For developers, the mobile/web seamlessness provides one of the biggest incentives for using the system. If you’ve got an Android app and a user is browsing around your desktop website after a Google+ login or signup, she will be prompted to download the Android app. Then, she can opt to get an over-the-air install of the app without ever touching her phone.

“A lot of times, [people] are using a web application that they love, and they don’t even realize it has an Android app,” Sternberg said. “It’s just not obvious. So we’ve made it easy to get an app onto your phone with one tap.”

As for iOS users, Glazer said they’ll be sent to Apple’s App Store from a download prompt; unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow that particular kind of automatic over-the-air download.

Google+ and social benefits

Aside from that killer OTA Android feature, why else would devs want to adopt yet another login/signup button, we asked?

After all, a lot of social graphs are duplicative across various social websites, so connecting an app’s content with a user’s online friends isn’t a unique function to Google+. Like Facebook’s Open Graph, Google+ signups let users see and edit what permissions an app has to interact with their profiles and networks. And like Facebook’s Open Graph, Google+ signups can lead to some really interesting interactive content.

But at least devs don’t have to get all Sophie’s Choice about it. “That’s not the thing we’re asking developers to choose, said Sternberg. “They can put Google+ signup next to Twitter or Facebook or their own authentication. … There are lots of great advantages for the developer and the user, but it’s not a one-or-the-other choice. … You could connect with both, or make it single sign-on.”

One advantage that Google+ has over Facebook, however, is that it’s encouraged its users to categorize their relationships and friend groups from the start. Facebook has friend-grouping features, but these came along rather late in the game, and not all users have risen to the challenge of organizing a few hundred folks by how well and from where they know them.

So Google+ has an advantage with its Circles, which means developers can use Google+ to offer truly selective sharing options. Selective sharing means items can go to certain Circles of friends, eliminating much of what Glazer and Sternberg call “social spam.”

And it’s not just Circles that get rid of unwanted social noise. Remember, Google has many opportunities to reach users, and not always when they’re in a social mood. The company could use Google+ app data to surface that app’s content when you’re doing web search or looking at YouTube videos (e.g., showing you songs your friends recommend when you’re browsing the web looking for new music).

Take Google+ launch partner Flixter. Glazer said, “One of the things that Flixster did; they realized this isn’t just about G+ sign-in, it’s about connecting their users to Google. .. So as part of their integration, they also connected to users’ calendars, so when people say they want to go to a movie, it shows up on their calendar and the people they’re going with. … They also took a look at the reviews people write of movies. And if I’m looking for a film and want to know what people I know say about it, that’s when it’s going to be relevant. Right place, right time.”

Those last four words seem to be something of a mantra with the Google+ team and reflect a big part of its attitude toward helping users share. After all, Google has a unique opportunity to reach more people at different times in their online lives than does Facebook. And when notifications can pop up in a variety of Google properties — email, web search, YouTube — there are more opportunities to serve content without having it be intrusive or spammy. “We’re not announcing any form of integration for any other properties,” said Glazer. “For now, these activities will go on a user’s profile. But you can imagine over time that these activities will appear in the right places.”

And finally, there’s security. Google says it’s banking on consumers’ much higher perception of web security and privacy with the new Google+ button. As Glazer put it, “[Security] is a big one. A user who’s not thinking about any of this stuff, they want to continue not thinking about this stuff. They just want to feel safe.”

And after years of FUD (as well as legitimate concerns) around how Facebook treats user data, Google has the upper hand in many consumers’ minds.

Next steps for current Google-linked devs

Google has long seen Google+ as a sort of passport that will eventually link all a user’s Google-powered activities to a single identity. So it comes as no surprise that the company is gently nudging developers toward the new login/signup button and away from older Google authentications.

“The underlying technology shares a lot of elements, but we’re not going to change the behavior of existing apps,” said Sternberg. “But we are suggesting to devs that they would benefit from a bunch of new features if they switch over.”

Glazer said getting up and running on Google+ buttons is a bit of an undertaking — that is, getting it right can require some effort. This isn’t a “plug in two lines of code and then have a launch party” kind of deal.

“What we’ve seen is that most people can get a prototype up in a couple of hours and get it shippable within a couple weeks,” he said. “Then they spend more time doing interesting connections, using other information. But the basics is on the order of a couple weeks.”

Check out the documentation for more details.

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Ever wanted to hangout with astronauts? Sure you have.

Well, today’s your lucky day. Google and NASA are hosting a Google+ Hangout with three astronauts that are currently stationed on the International Space Station. The Hangout begins at 7:30 a.m. PT / 10:30 a.m. ET and should last an hour.

NASA astronauts Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn and Canadian astronaut (and the best Facebook photo-taker ever) Chris Hadfield will be on hand to answer questions and talk about their experiences.

NASA is going to mostly select the questions in advance, but you can still submit questions while the Hangout is in progress through Google+, Facebook, and Twitter using the hashtag “#AskAstro.”

The video above will be live soon with the Hangout.

President Obama will take to Google+ for a Hangout two days after the State of the Union address to answer questions and talk about his second term, Google announced today.

Obama hosted a Google+ Hangout last year as well, and he could be establishing a tradition of connecting with citizens via social media following the State of the Union. Before the election last November, the President also used other channels to connect with voters including Reddit.

Other Obama administration officials have also hosted Google+ Hangouts. Most recently Vice President Joe Biden hosted a discussion on gun violence while Domestic Policy Director Cecilia Munoz hosted her own chat on immigration.

Obama’s Google+ Hangout this week will happen Thursday at 4:50 p.m. ET. People can submit or vote on questions that they want addressed by the President until 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Feb. 13.

Check out the video below for more:

President Obama photo via Jon Neiderbach/Flickr

Proving just how versatile Google+’s Hangouts group video chat feature can be, NASA announced yesterday that it will offer its first Hangout with the crew of the International Space Station later this month.

NASA astronauts Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn, along with the Canadian Space Agency’s Chris Hadfield, will discuss questions about their life aboard the ISS.

The live video chat will take place on February 22 at 11 a.m. to noon Eastern on NASA’s Google+ page and YouTube channel. You have until February 12 to submit a video question to the astronauts via YouTube, or you can ask questions during the event via Google+,  Twitter, Facebook with the the hashtag #askAstro.

Even though Google+ is struggling for legitimacy as a social network (sorry Google, huge user counts don’t always equal engagement), Hangouts been something of a breakout feature. It’s not surprising to see why: Hangouts are a huge step above entrenched video chat solutions like Skype, and its ability to run live chats with up to 10 people never fails to amaze me. The addition of Hangouts on Air last year made the service even more useful, with its ability to let anyone broadcast a hangout to the public.

News of the Hangout comes just a few days after NASA announced plans to put 150 of its social media fans in touch with the ISS at a Washington, D.C. event on February 20.

I’m finding myself using Google+ more and more. I recently decided that the long game Google is playing is absolutely brilliant. They are being understated about it but doing exactly what business strategists talk about when they describe the long game as the one to play.

Rather than making a bunch of sweeping pronouncements, struggling to jam together a bunch of random crap in a big bang release, and then worry about staying involved in a feature race with a competitor, Google is continually experimenting with new functionality, rolling it out broadly in a fully integrated fashion on a continuous basis, and providing it as a core part of an ever expanding thing that is getting more and more useful by the week.

By now I hope you are saying, “What the heck is he talking about — Facebook is crushing Google+” or something like that. Yeah, whatever. That’s why it’s the long game they are playing.

Here are some examples.

I live in Gmail. Suddenly, I found this magical thing called Circles to be useful. When I get behind on my email, I simply go through a few of the circles (Foundry, Foundry Entrepreneurs) and clear the email from my partners, my assistant Kelly, and the CEOs I work with. I have persistent chat up; I find that 80 percent of my chats now go through Gchat (the other 20 percent are Skype, and they are almost always requested by someone else). And now that there are Hangouts integrated, many of these chats are video chats.

Google Voice is my phone number. I used to have desktop phones. I don’t anymore; I have a Google voice number and an iPhone. I give everyone my Google voice number. It works everywhere. I never think about what phone I’m using anymore. And I do many calls via the computer.

Google Hangouts is my new calendar invite. I hate the telephone. Hate hate hate. But I don’t mind chat. And I don’t mind a Google Hangouts or video calls. All of a sudden I can make invites from Google Calendar that are Hangout invites. Done. Every phone call/conference call is now a Hangout.

I live in Chrome. I have several computers. I never notice the difference between them. I’m downstairs at my place in Keystone right now on my Macbook Air. When I go up into my office, I’ll be on my treadputer with a different Macbook Air (an older one) connected to a 27-inch monitor. I switch regularly between the two throughout the day and don’t even notice.

Now you are thinking, “Ok Brad, but other than the Hangouts, Circles within email, and Hangouts within Calendar, what are you using Google+ for?” Just those three things have completely changed my workflow massively for the better. And they just showed up for me one day. I didn’t have to do anything.

In 2012, I used all the normal Google+ stuff. I reposted content there. I followed people. I occasionally chatted, commented, or +1ed. Facebook-like features. But I didn’t care that much about that stuff — yet.

Now I’ve got Communities. I’ve got Events. I’ve got Pages. And Hangouts and Circles integrate seamlessly with each of these things. And they are nicely integrated with Gmail and Calendar. And suddenly I can do On-Air Hangouts. And I can record them automatically and save them to my YouTube channel. Keep playing for another few years, user by user, company by company, integrated feature by integrated feature.

Yeah, it drives me crazy that Google still thinks I’m brad@feld.com, brad@foundrygroup.com, brad@startuprev.com, and brad.feld@gmail.com. Some day they’ll integrate these. And as I approach 25,000 contacts, I’ll probably start complaining about how this limit is ridiculous, just like I did at 10,000. But I can deal with all of that.

Google, thanks for playing the long game here. I wish more companies, especially other tech companies, did this, especially when they have massive resources. Sure, some think they are playing the long game, but they are really playing the short game with a bunch of things that take a long time for them to get out the door. Different game.

Brad Feld is a managing director at Foundry Group. He lives in Boulder, Colo. and invests in software and Internet companies around the United States. In his spare time, he runs marathons and reads a lot.

In November 2011, we let all y’all know that Google+ was not a social network; rather, our Google sources told us, it was intended to be a unified login system for all Google services, the single key to unlock all your Google-powered apps and accounts.

Then yesterday, some folks in the tech press sounded the alarm: “Google is forcing users to use Google+!”

Well, yeah, duh. We told you that a year ago.

In the words of Googler Bradley Horowitz, aka the Google+ czar, “We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google. … It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.”

That wording might come across as a little sinister, but think about it from another perspective: You use Facebook Messages, Facebook News Feed, and Facebook Photos. In fact, you might even have separate mobile apps for each service. You might have a Facebook Page for your dog or your company or your softball team, too. But you use the same login and profile for all of ‘em. It’s massively more convenient to you, and it’s much more profitable for Facebook.*

In fact, we, the consumers, like Facebook’s single-login system so much, we’ll use it for any number of apps and websites that are otherwise totally unrelated to Facebook. Someday, you might use Facebook to login to your daggone bank. Who knows?

Back to our interview from way back in the mists of time: Horowitz continued to say that Google+, which at the time was slowly being tacked on services like Blogger and Reader, would someday become the way you get access to Google’s web search. And Gmail. And Google Maps.

With Google’s rich cornucopia of online services, Horowitz told us the company was at a point in its product development when it needed a way to manage accounts and unify data — something overarching and holistic that would remove the need for each user to have three or five or ten logins for their various accounts — accounts that have duplicative information about you, your tastes, your habits, and your network of friends and family.

“We have browsers, phones, self-driving cars, TVs,” Horowitz said. “In many ways, these products have grown up very autonomously and have veered off in different directions, and it’s clear that we can now rationalize them and make them coherent and accretive to each other.”

From a product point of view, nothing makes more sense than Google “forcing” you to use Google+ as a unified login. For users, it should eventually be much less of a hassle to get around the sprawling spread of your Google services and apps. And while you can already use your Google account to login to other sites and apps, logging in with a Google+ account might give those sites and apps more and/or better information to customize the service you’re using.

And let’s take a small step back from the violent lingo: No one, dear reader, is “forcing” you to do anything. You can use Yahoo Mail, Bing, Vimeo, Dropbox, and any other number of service if you don’t like Google’s new login system.

*Time for another round of Follow the Money! When corporations do things that users hate or that don’t make sense, all you have to do to sort it out is follow the money. Google makes something like 97 percent of its money from online advertising. It can sell more ads for more money when it can give advertisers more information about who is seeing and clicking on those ads. So, for example, if you have a unified login that syncs data about you from your Maps account, your YouTube account, and your web searches, an ad buyer could tell Google, “I want to show this ad to pregnant women in San Francisco who like Taylor Swift,” and Google could deliver. For a price. A much higher price than if Google could only narrow down the ad viewer by location or music video views or recent web queries.

And that, my friends, is why Google is getting rid of the labyrinth of logins in favor of a single, semi-social login to rule them all: money.

Google has added 24 new features to its Google+ service and updated its beautiful Android and iOS apps inyet another show of commitment to the social network.

Despite issues with getting people to spend a lot of time on Google+, Google claims 500 million users have upgraded to Google+ accounts, while 235 million are actively using Google+ features (like +1-ing apps or following friends in Google searches.) The company says 135 million users are actively using the Google+ stream proper. So it makes sense to keep refining the network.

For coordinating holiday gatherings, Google+ has added new event-planning features. Through Google+ Events, you can send messages to specific guests and see who’s viewed your invitation. There’s also a way to invite people by simply putting a link to your Google+ event into an email. Guests can also RSVP for how many people they will be bringing.

If someone can’t make your event, you can have them attend a Google+ “Hangout,” the social network’s version of group video chat. Handily, Google+ Hangouts now can run on lower bandwidth so even more people can try it. You only need 150 KB of bandwidth to take part in a session.

And here’s a list of what’s new in Google+’s updated Android app:

• New feature: Google+ Communities
• Support for full resolution photo uploads via Instant Upload
• Subscribe to any circle for notifications
• Support for time zones in Events
• Basic profile editing
• Integration with Google Now to send birthday wishes to friends
• Support for animated GIFs
• Express your mood via animated images in posts
• View and explore Photo Sphere images (Android 4.2+)
• Add the Google+ widget to your device’s lock screen (Android 4.2+)

The iOS app’s update isn’t quite so extensive, but it’s still seeing some decent changes. You can now:

• Swipe through photo albums inline
• Tap once to view photos in all their glory
• Now applies a subtle pan-zoom-scale effect to pictures in the stream

Photos via Google

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google today released an Android version of the sophisticated photo-editing application Snapseed, a product it picked up in its acquisition of photography software developer Nik Software. The company also updated the Snapsneed app for iOS to make it free.

Snapseed’s mobile application features auto correct and filters, just like Facebook-owned Instagram, but is more robust in the photo-editing department and not a social network for following friends’ or celebrities’ captures. The application won last year’s Apple’s iPad app of the year award.

Snapseed for Android, released Thursday, comes with all the same goodies previously found on iOS, including the ability to selectively adjust photo elements such as focus, brightness, saturation, contrast, and white balance. Both the newly free iOS app and the brand-new Android app come with one-click sharing to Google+, of course.

The releases are all about enhancing Google’s position in the hierarchy of places to consume and share digital photography. Facebook may be top destination for photo-sharing, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon, but the company seems to think it can, with Snapseed’s help, make its Google+ social network the preferred destination for rich and beautiful images.

Google+ touts 135 million people active in the stream. The service also now has a groups feature called Google+ Communities.

Google rolled out a brand new feature for its Google+ social network today, which brings the ability to form groups based around a specific interest, organization, or passion.

The new Google+ Communities feature is very similar to the staple Facebook Groups feature, which lets you communicate with a group of people in a more specific way than you would by sharing information broadly with the entire social network. It’s also a feature that’s been lacking on Google+ since its initial launch.

“What’s been missing  … are more permanent homes for all the stuff you love: the wonderful, the weird, and yes, even the things that are waaay out there,” wrote Google SVP Vic Gundotra in a recent blog post. “With Google+ Communities there’s now a gathering place for your passions.”

So what’s the difference between Google+ Communities and Facebook Groups? Well, there are a few notable things, including the ability to start a Google Hangout video chat with the community and sharing things specifically with G+ communities from any +1 button. That’s pretty cool, and something that might actually attract people to use it over Facebook.

Check out the demo video embedded below, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Along with announcing a new Communities feature for Google+ today, Google also finally gave us some updated stats on Google+.

More than 500 million users have upgraded to Google+ accounts, while 235 million are actively using Google+ features (like +1′ing apps, or following friends in Google Search), Google Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra said in a blog post today.

135 million users are active in the  Google+ stream proper, the service’s equivalent of Facebook’s news feed. The numbers show significant growth from June, when Google+ only had 250 million total accounts and 150 million monthly active users.

“This enthusiasm, we think, stems from our building tools that build real relationships — in a live hangout, around a breathtaking photo, or with an inner circle of friends,” Gundotra wrote.

While far from Facebook’s 1 billion monthly active users, the growth shows that Google+ isn’t something to be ignored. Even if you don’t use the service as a true Facebook replacement, it’s becoming increasingly complementary to Google’s other services. That makes it something of a social networking Trojan Horse for Google, and an increasingly bigger threat to Facebook.

Today, Google gave its Hangouts video chat app an updated look and feel, including a new sidebar, a new tool for app interaction, and new notifications.

The biggest part of today’s announcement is the sidebar, which shows up on the left side of the screen next to your Hangout.

“The most important part of a hangout is the people in the room, so we’ve consolidated important items (like invites, chat, and apps) into a sidebar that’s there when you need it and tucked away when you don’t,” wrote Googler Amit Fulay today in a Google+ post on the news.

The sidebar also contains a list of frequently used apps and apps currently in use in the hangout. You can remove apps from your sidebar list at any time.

Finally, Google has rolled out new notifications for you to read and respond to from inside a hangout. Alerts show up in red, actions are blue, and announcements are grey.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Google will be rolling out the changes to all Google+ users within the next of couple days, Fulay wrote.

Just a few weeks ago, the social network reached a big membership milestone: 100 million monthly active users, as well as 400 million registered users.

Google also recently introduced a new Studio Mode option for Hangouts on Air, both special features designed with Google+-using musicians in mind.

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google has taken its integrations one step further and made it incredibly easy to share files from Google Drive to its Google+ social network, the company announced in a blog post today.

Google Drive launched in April and has likely taken away at least some business from Dropbox, Box, SugarSync, and other cloud storage players. In June, Google said it would bring Drive to iOS and Chrome OS. And since then, Drive has added more features to make it a more robust offering. Now it’s got deep Google+ integration.

When you’re inside of Drive, all you need to do is click the Google+ icon to share your content to the social network. Or you can simply copy and paste a link from your Drive file into a post on Google+.

Google Program Manager Louis Gray writes:

Google+ is already a great place to share photos, videos, updates, and ideas. Google Drive is your cloud destination for all this content and more. Starting today, you can share content from Drive right here in your stream. I’ve been looking forward to this launch in a big way, and it’s incredible to see it here. Go forth and share.

Photo credit: Google/YouTube

Google+ now has 100 million monthly active users and 400 million registered users. Let’s all break out the party favors and host a few hangouts!

But wait just a second. The new figures, revealed by Google’s senior veep of engineering Vic Gundotra in a Google+ update this morning, have me scratching my head.

Google reported in June that its 1-year-old social network had reached 150 million active users. Did Google+ actually lose 50 million monthly active users over the summer? That would not be cause for celebration, now, would it? Let’s also not forget that in April of this year, Google said that Google+ had reached 100 million active users. Now I’m getting a case of déjà vu.

So what gives?

The discrepancy in monthly active users looks to be a semantics problem. From what I’ve been able to decipher, Google sees 100 million people visit plus.google.com or Google+ mobile apps each month. The 150 million number, however, is a catch-all figure that applies to all Google+ activity happening across any of Google’s socially enhanced services such as Gmail, search, and YouTube.

Google+ the social network has 100 million monthly active users. Google+ the social layer has 150 million active users. Get? Got it? Good.

Why would Google report two numbers that essentially sound the same but mean two different things? Well, the 100 million monthly active user stat reported today is an achievement that directly addresses critics’ “ghost town” accusations. In essence, Gundotra proved that people — 100 million each month to be exact — intentionally (not by accident, naysayers!) visit Google+ on desktop or mobile to connect with friends, brands, and celebrities.

Photo credit: 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com

July 9-10, 2013
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Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google bought “photography first” mobile app developer Nik Software today, meaning it now owns Instagram competitor Snapseed. But while Snapseed gives Google those sepia filters, it also provides an arsenal of photography apps the company can use for its social network, Google+.

Snapseed raises eyebrows because it’s a competitor to Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1 billion in April. Instagram is wildly popular and was already showing signs of its dominance when Facebook picked it up. At the time Instagram had roughly 30 million users. Today, it has over 100 million users, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The social network wrapped up the deal last week after the Federal Trade Commission OK’d it, which may be putting pressure on Google to compete.

Snapseed, of course, doesn’t have the following or fame of Instagram. It’s more likely that Google wants Nik Software, which creates a number of different photography apps, to add functionality to Google+.

While we often push Google+ off to the side as “Google’s attempt to do a social network,” photographers have actually flocked to the site. Google+ displays photos in a lightbox and did so before Facebook switched to the feature, which displays photos in a larger format, separated from the rest of the content on the screen. Indeed, photographer Thomas Hawk even created a list of the “1,500 Kickass Photographers on Google+” (after which Facebook contacted Hawk to talk about what it could do for photographers).

Nik Software’s other apps could be used to improve the photo features of the Google+ Android and iOS apps.

Image via Snapseed; hat tip The Verge

Google’s Project Glass might be the latest form of “walking in someone else’s shoes.” While it gives us a new way to see the world, it lets outsiders see the world through others’ eyes. What better week to see through someone else’s eyes than Fashion Week.

Google is teaming up with arguably one of the most revered designers of ready to wear fashion, Diane Von Furstenberg. She is credited with giving women the gift of the wrap dress, and is one of those fashion icons whose name will always be synonymous with effortlessness.

Now, please let me remove my lips from her ass.

A few DVF employees (maybe even Diane herself) will be wearing one of Google’s “Project Glass” headpieces throughout her show at Fashion Week. Project Glass is that Star Trek-like technology that gives you information about your surroundings in your eyes, as opposed to on a phone screen. Google and DVF will air a “short film” on her Google+ brand page on September 13 and on YouTube. She has also been posting photos from today’s show on her Google+ page, which you can see now.

It looks like some of the models also wore the eye glasses, so we may get a shot of what it’s like to cat walk.

Google may also be trying to prove that the eye-wear is, well, wearable, by associating it with Fashion Week. That’s one of the big issues Google will face when releasing technology that becomes an accessory. It has to be something people will want to wear.

The technology might not answer the age-old question, “Is my yellow, your yellow?” but as long as yellow doesn’t become the new black, I think we’re all good.

Image via DVF’s Google+

Google has added new business-focused features to its Google+ social network including restricted posts, video Hangout integration with Google Calendar, and better administrative controls.

Google+ has mostly had a consumer-facing focus since its launch more than a year ago. But now it’s beginning to show that it’s committed to businesses using the service now as part of the Google Apps suite. Google seems to think if a business is already using Google Docs and Gmail, then that business might as well start using Google+ for video chat and social networking.

“Today we’re launching an initial set of Google+ features designed specifically for businesses, and we’re excited to move into a full preview mode for Apps customers,” a Google spokesperson said. “During this preview period, organizations that have gone Google will be able to use the business features of Google+ for free through the end of 2013 while we continue to add more features and administrative controls designed for organizations.”

The first major feature is restricted posts, which are private to your organization and can’t be shared outside of your business network. You also add sharing your post with people outside the organization as well.

Next is Google+ Hangouts integration with Google Calendar. Hangouts was already integrated with Gmail and Docs, so it was easier to launch Hangouts from those apps. Now Google Apps users will be able to add Hangouts to events in their calendars, making it possible for attendees to join a Hangout from the invite or Cal entry.

Finally, Google is adding better administrative controls to Google+. Admins will be able set defaults and restrictions on what employees can do with Google+ posts. They can also set up restrictions on Google+ Hangouts to make video meetings private.

Google also has more business-focused features planned for the future, including “a mobile version of Google+ for enterprise users and more administrative controls.”

Photo illustration: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Original briefcase photo: Kitch Bain/Shutterstock

Google’s getting political this year; the company is bringing all the drama, dirt, and hyperbole of the Democratic and Republican national conventions directly to you in a series of wonky Google+ hangouts.

Not “wonky” in the sense that they won’t work well; “wonky” in the D.C. sense that they’ll be full of deep-diving policy and political nerding-out, enough of it to drive the average couch potato mad.

“We’re looking forward to making this year’s conventions the most interactive ever,” wrote a Googler on the Google Politics, Elections, and Public Sector Team on the company blog.

Representatives of both political parties and organizers for the conventions will be chatting in these hangouts with journalists from the best-known media outlets in the U.S., including The New York Times, NBC, CNN, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, and even our digital brethren and sistren over at Huffington Post.

“In addition to these hangouts with top Google+ [media] partners, we’ll have a few surprises up our sleeves to give you never-before-seen access to the conventions,” the Google blog continues. ”Stay tuned for more in the coming days as things heat up in Tampa and Charlotte!”

In the meantime, Google is maintaining an active Google+ page for the upcoming elections, YouTube’s got its own elections hub, and the search giant also has a news-filled, nonsocial Google elections hub for those who’d like to observe the fall games without too much commentary from the peanut gallery — err, we mean the electorate.

Google and the NFL have teamed up to make fantasy football more real for pigskin fanatics everywhere.

Wednesday, in advance of the 2012 football season, the companies announced that they’re adding Google+ hangouts to fantasy football pages. The team-up will give people a one-click way to video conference with their fellow league compatriots.

Participants will be able to initiate Google+ Hangouts with league members and be alerted when anyone in their league is already “hanging out.” The functionality is designed to make for more dynamic fantasy draft sessions, spirited trading discussions, or interactive game-day viewing parties.

NFL commentators will also make appearances and host Hangouts each week for a rundown of each week’s fantasy football highlights.

“Because most fans select their fantasy rosters in real time, and many leagues consist of people from across the globe, we think you’ll find that hangouts are a natural extension of your (healthy) obsession,” Google+ product director Nikhyl Singhal said in a blog post.

The Google-NFL hook-up is an interesting one that will not only provide more web exposure for the (arguably) coolest feature of Google’s social network but will also introduce the video chatrooms to broadcast viewing audiences. The NFL Network plans to pluck the best soundbites from commentator Hangouts each week and broadcast them on air.

Photo credit: Danny E Hooks/Shutterstock

Well, would you look at that. Google+, the oft-criticized social network from search giant Google, is growing remarkably fast.

Google+ picked up 66 percent more unique visitors between November and June for a total of 110.7 million visitors in June, according to comScore data. In the U.S., Google+ showed even stronger pickup, with 82 percent growth for a total of 27.7 million U.S. visitors in June.

comScore’s numbers reflect web traffic and don’t account for mobile or tablet traffic. Officially, Google has said that it has more than 150 million monthly active users and that 50 percent of active users sign in daily.

Whoa, Google+ is on track to be the next Facebook, you say. Well hold on there, cowboy. I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t point out some obvious, unsexy reasons why Google+ grew uniques so significantly between November and June. Mainly, Google has pushed ahead its social layer strategy in recent months by intertwining a number of its products. The company has paid special attention to connecting search, Gmail, and Maps to Google+.

Also, don’t forget that Google’s local business pages are now Google+ Local business pages, which means that any time you search for a local business on Google, you’ll find a Google+ page waiting for you. The transition happened in late May, and I have to believe that it’s pushing millions of new visitors to Google+. There’s also the fact that any new Google account now automatically comes with a Google+ account.

Sure, I may be skeptical in thinking that these traffic gains aren’t a real indication that Google+, as a social network, poses any real threat to Facebook, but I’m not the only one.

“Users are not that active and [are] still relegated to a subset of tech savvy people,” Altimeter Group mobile analyst Chris Silva told me a few weeks ago at Google I/O. “[Google+] is not nearly as broadly accepted as Facebook.”

On the plus side of things, Google recently released promising and quite pretty mobile applications that not only make the Google+ experience far more compelling, but also show that Google, more so than Facebook, understands how to make a compelling social experience for touch-screen devices.

h/t The Verge/Morten Myrstad, data provided by comScore

Photo credit: 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com

Every weekday morning, a new project will be hosted by an expert camp counselor who will walk campers through the steps. Kids spend the morning learning from the “makers” and following their directions to build projects. After a midday lunch break, Maker Camp hosts hangouts with junior counselors who act as resources if the participants have questions or challenges. Each day brings a new theme. There is Maker Monday, Tinkering Tuesday, Weird Science Wednesday, Theoretical Thursday, and Field Trip Friday.

Today’s first project, titled “Rockets!” was led by Rock Schertle, a middle school science teacher. He conducted the session from the New York Hall of Science and demonstrated how kids could make rockets at home using vinegar, baking soda, and gravity.

“Not every kid has the ability to go to a summer camp, so we are bringing it to them,” said Sherry Huss, the director of Maker Faire. “Maker Camp gets rid of the physical challenge of needing to be somewhere at a specific time. The makers that we work with are so generous in spirit and in ideas, and we have received great feedback from parents who don’t know what to do with their kids during the summer.”

Maker Camp has partnered with educational institutions around the country to ensure the quality of the curriculum is high. Libraries and museums are on board, as well as organizations like National Geographic and NASA. Maker and Google have also created security features so the campers are monitored and safe online, and parents know what they are up to. Since today was the first day, the numbers are still out on how many kids tuned in, and the MAKE team will look at the platform again in 30 days to assess if any changes need to be made.

Google’s gorgeous new iPad app for its Google+ social network is now live in the App Store, the company announced today on its blog.

The company introduced the app for iPad at its recent I/O conference. And it’s a wonderful-looking application that shames Facebook’s mobile app design. While Google+ the network is much less exciting than Facebook, it’s easy to see Google is at least owning on the design front.

One of the best features for the app (and Google+ as a whole) is undoubtedly the video “Hangouts,” which go well with the iPad’s design. The company writes:

There’s nothing like catching up with friends face to face. Now you can start a video chat with up to nine friends anywhere, anytime, with Hangouts on iPhone and iPad. Turn on ringing notifications so your friends know to join the Hangout.

To get started, tap “Hangout” from the main menu, add some friends, and tap “Start.” We’ll ring their phones, if you want, and if someone misses the hangout, they can ring you back with a single tap.

Take a look at Google+ for iPad photo below to get an idea of what a video Hangout looks like.

Those little Google +1 buttons you see littered across the web now double as handy indicators that tell you more content you might like — be it apps or articles — is just a click away.

That’s because, Google, as promised, has pushed live an update to the Google +1 button that provides all users, whether they’re signed into Google+ or not, with content recommendations, on mouse-over, unique to the sites they’re browsing.

The recommendations were first released in preview mode at Google’s developer I/O conference two weeks ago. As VentureBeat’s John Koetsier pointed out at the time, the enhanced buttons serve as gateways to unexplored content on the sites you love, and could go a long way in helping developers and publishers keep audiences engaged on their sites.

The extra plus-one functionality has been automatically appended to all +1 buttons, meaning developers and web publishers needn’t update a single line of code to deliver the content recommendations to their users or readers. Now that’s a plus.

Photo credit: 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com

The Chrome Web Store will now start dishing out app recommendations based on the apps your Google+ friends have upvoted. Let’s hope your friends aren’t all just closet Angry Birds addicts, right?

Google+ has long been the cornerstone of Google’s big, gnarly plan to knit all its web apps and user profiles into one colossal, interconnected software suite. This matter of app recommendation is merely the icing on the cake.

“This isn’t the entire Internet, it’s your entire Internet,” said Google web search chief Jack Menzel during a recent interview about Google+ data making its way into other Google products. “With Google+, we understand who people are, and we use that.”

The recommendations engine might also prove to be a nice boost for app developers ever in need of more and better distribution channels.

On the company blog, we read the internal monologue of Googler Hui Guo, who writes, “Since I started working on the Chrome Web Store, all my friends have been asking me which apps to try out. Between checking with colleagues for their suggestions and creating shared lists on Google spreadsheets, I thought there must be an easier way to share my favorite apps with the rest of the world.”

Wait, what? There are people in this world who make shared spreadsheets of apps they use?

World’s most tech-and-social-media-obsessed spreadsheet aside, Guo continues, “To make finding the right app even easier, all apps that have been +1’d by someone in your circles will be indicated as such throughout the Chrome Web Store, helping you decide which apps to install.”

As Google social guy Bradley Horowitz told us several months ago in an in-depth discussion of Google+’s ultimate ambitions, “We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google… a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product.” That is, Google+ was intended to glean data from your social graph so it could power features exactly like this one.

It’s worth noting that Facebook recently launched its own app store for web and mobile apps, putting it into competition with Google on yet another front. Google’s addition of more social information via recommendations is necessary for the company to keep a competitive in the still-evolving area of app distribution.

Google+-based recommendations have been popping up in other Googley web destinations, as well — most notably in the Holy Grail of Google software, it web search, which now offers users a Search Plus Your World integration with Google+.

As of last week, Google’s social side claimed 150 million monthly active users, paltry compared to Facebook’s roughly 900 million MAUs but still significant given that Google+ only launched one year ago.

Google+ is better than Facebook — at mobile.

Google released a tablet version of its mobile application for the Google+ social network at its Google I/O developer conference. And even though Vic Gundotra’s Google+ presentation was the least exciting and most interruptible portion of the keynote, the tablet application, available for Android and soon for iPad, knocked my socks off.

I couldn’t help but think: This is how a current social network should look on a touch-screen device. So beautiful, so alive with color, so fluid, and so dynamic in its visual delivery of stories is Google+ in tablet form, that the app makes Facebook’s mobile applications look as if they were built in the MySpace era.

Specifically, I love the look of the stream, which now styles content based on popularity (+1s and comments), type (photos, videos, URLs), and the orientation of your device (I’m partial to the landscape view). The tablet app is even more bold and beautiful in design than the recently released iPhone app. The only thing missing? People.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. In chatting with Altimeter Group mobile analyst Chris Silva about the application, I discovered that he too found Google to be more avant garde than Facebook in an area that Facebook should know best.

“[The app] definitely shows the prowess that Google has over Facebook in terms of mobile design and in creating a captivating mobile experience,” Silva said.

“Facebook … has a potentially, comparatively better arsenal of mobile development talent on board,” he added. “Here’s Google doing all this great development work on mobile with largely internal talent, and Facebook that’s gone out and spent a billion dollars on Instagram, made all these other acquisitions … and still hasn’t yet created that experience that makes me say, ‘wow.’”

As any Facebook user knows, the mobile experience is quite slow, clunky, and choppy when it works. Sometimes the app is barely functional at all.

“It’s funny that the leading social network … is completely lacking in mobile design, while the social network that’s leading in mobile design seems to be at a stasis in terms of growing its users,” said Silva in the most astute observation of all.

It certainly makes sense for Google to invest in building a great mobile experience. Not only is the entire world trading in the web for mobile, but Google+ is itself a social network that sees more mobile engagement than it does desktop engagement.

“We now have more users engaging with Google+ from mobile than desktop. That’s a significant situation, and we take it seriously,” Gundotra said on stage during the keynote.

But here’s the caveat: Silva thinks the app, even in all its glory, boils down to just a bright, shiny object. That means Google+ poses no immediate threat to Facebook.

“Right now, there’s still no reason [for Google+] to displace Facebook as the social network of record,” Silva said.

So while Google can claim that G+ has 150 million monthly active users and that active users are spending 12 minutes per day in the stream, Silva remains underwhelmed.

“[Google+ users] can be engaged for two, three, four, five hours a day. They’re still a small segment of the social networking population. I don’t see anything that’s compelling enough to change how big that slice of pie is for Google.”

But make no mistake, mobile is Facebook Achilles’ heel, and it certainly doesn’t look good for the newly public company to lose to Google in a mobile face-off.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

What a difference a year makes. Instead of insinuating that it was eating Apple for lunch, Google this year sent a message to consumers, developers, and the media at its Google I/O conference this week that its appetite for mobile is so ravenous that it’s willing to dine at Apple’s table.

Google revealed across two days of keynotes that three of its flagship Google applications — Drive, Chrome, and Google+ — are arriving on iOS. Google’s mobile Chrome browser and its Drive cloud-document center landed on iOS today. Google+ is coming soon for iPad, senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said yesterday.

No biggie, right? Wrong. Though Google would likely tell you that its mobile aspirations are platform-agnostic — the company declined the opportunity to chat with me about its iOS strategy — this reporter, along with analysts and attendees VentureBeat talked to, noticed a perceptible about-face.

“It’s a huge tone shift from last year,” developer and This Week in Google host Gina Trapani told me. “Last year, it was a picture of Android eating Apple,” she said, adding that the message to developer attendees was: Look at how great we are. “This year it was the promise of coming to the iPad.”

Here’s some proof: Google’s applications for Apple’s mobile devices were given ample demo time during the company’s two keynotes Wednesday and Thursday. Gundotra, in a moment that exemplified the shift Trapani spoke of, said Wednesday that the Google+ application looked “gorgeous” on the retina display of Apple’s latest iPad. It was a statement that he didn’t need to make, especially during the same event that birthed Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, and yet he said it.

“It was an acknowledgement that people love iOS,” Trapani said. “I’m really happy to see that they’re getting their best stuff on [Apple's] platform.”

Chris Silva, mobile analyst for Altimeter Group, noticed the nod to iOS as well. “[Google] realizes that … there’s a huge platform that they need to serve in iOS, both in smartphones and in tablets,” he told me.

But Silva also believes there’s something more to Google’s iOS love. Instead of just giving a nod to a competitor’s beloved platform, Google, he thinks, hopes to hook Apple-lovers on its own hardware.

“There’s probably a lot of investment being made so that they can tempt people over to the Android side of the fence by having rich application experiences,” Silva said. “You could argue that what we saw today in browsing is head and shoulders above what anyone else is offering in mobile browsing. Once I start using Chrome on my laptop, and then on my tablet, and then on my smartphone, the barrier to entry for Android goes down quite significantly.”

Perhaps, then, what we’ve just witnessed is a Trojan-horse strategy. Google looks to dine with its enemy in peace but is really crafting an attack that will help it eat Apple from the inside out.

Image credit: jay.tong/Flickr

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

Stop the dadgum presses! Googler Louis Gray just told us about a new Google+ feature that you won’t read about anywhere else.

Called Google+ History, this new API will let you add past statuses, updates, purchases, pictures, and more to you personal Google+ timeline from a variety of social and mobile services. These objects are displayed in pretty tiles called “moments.”

This feature wasn’t included in the Google+ update announcements at Google I/O, the company’s developer conference happening this week in San Francisco. But it ties Google+ to existing social networks in some interesting ways, and it may soon have some ties to the just-announced Google+ Events as well.

With History API-enabled apps, you’ll be able to browse through your Google+-linked accounts on a range of social services and apps — Gray mentioned Foursquare and Twitter as examples. You can then pick and choose from past events, images, updates, and checkins, pulling those items into your Google+ profile.

Basically, for users it’s a more or less convenient way for you to beef up your shiny, (relatively) new Google+ profile with rich content from your past and to give your profile a more Facebook-like, comprehensive snapshot of who you are. It’s comparable to similar Facebook Timeline features that allow you to affix earlier dates and location tags to statuses and photos.

For developers, it’s a great way to push your app’s content into the Google+ stream — and with any luck, create a Facebook Timeline-like bump in usage similar to how you’d use Facebook Actions for your app’s structured data.

And while other-network updates can’t yet be tied to Google+ updates and events or grouped together themselves (think of linking a collection of Flickr pictures with a Foursquare checkin, or grouping all updates from an app à la Timeline’s structured-data groupings), don’t be surprised if features like that pop up soon.

You can check out the new API and documentation for yourself. For now, this is API is in developer preview mode. “Take that, puny users, mwahaha,” said a fictional Google rep.

Stay tuned for lots more from Google I/O today — the fun and news are all just getting started.

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